Challenges | A Thankfully Imperfect Woman

Oct 4

Prayers for Our Children

I pray…I praise…and I live a Christian life, or should I say I attempt to. Strength in my Christianity is something I struggle with at times, and yet at the same time, my faith in prayer is always strong.

Today I want to ask you to join me in prayer for two very special children who are going through challenges. One of these young people has become special to me even though we’ve never met, and the second is one who desperately needs the world’s prayers now, even though we haven’t even seen her face.

The first is a sweet little man whom I’ve only met through a video and yet I love him already. For those of you who read my blog post “Red Fred Project – Join Me”, you’ve met him too. This is the quote from Dallas Graham’s Facebook page today: (Dallas is the creative genius behind the Red Fred Project)… Guys: Our Nathan, from Red Fred Project, broke his back coming home from school today. His mom, Rachel Glad, says he seems in less pain as long as he’s on his back. Please send love, thoughts and prayers to our incredible little man, Nathan. We love you, Nathan. He has a Facebook page: Nathan Ryan Glad Foundation. Drop him a message! … Let’s all say a prayer for this little man and his family. And if you haven’t yet, join his foundation, and join the Red Fred Project so we can meet more young people like Nathan and can give them a voice too.

The second is a little girl who desperately needs our prayers at this very moment in time. She’s a little one year old who saw her Mom being killed by police officers in Washington D.C. yesterday. A little girl, innocent to this world’s troubles, innocent to her Mom’s troubles that caused this horrible situation…a little girl innocent. I pray that she be surrounded with love, I pray that she be safe, I pray that she have no memory of what happened yesterday, and I pray for her Momma…may God take her to Heaven and lay peace in her troubled heart and mind. And may she now be a special angel for her little girl.

Amen.

Patty O

Picture credit: Pinterest, Teresa Kogul

Sep 23

11 Comments

A Bad Day and a Wake Up Call

It was a day.

A day like no other.

Where so many major things that could go wrong, did go wrong. Or so I thought.

First a neighbor hit my parked car which was parked along the side of our house (not my normal spot) and about 4 inches into the alley. Accidents happen, I get it, I gave him a hug.

Then the police officer stopped by and gave me a ticket for “parking in the alley”. Seriously. And indicated it was my fault that the accident happened. And he proceeded to hand me a ticket, tell me I could pick up the accident report later today, and apologized, while frustrated tears rolled down my cheeks. I hate crying when I’m frustrated, but sometimes it just happens anyway.

I then dropped my car off at the dealership for an estimate and borrowed my mother-in-law (and her car) to drive two hours to a dr appt.

On the way to the appt, a young boy crossed the road running after his Momma. She was about 40 feet ahead of him, plugged into her earphones. I hit the brakes, which thankfully prevented me from hitting him as he proceeded to run ahead of me (ps, I was driving through a green light). As I laid on my horn, in an attempt to alert the Mom, she decided to scream at me. Seriously.

The Dr. appt brought news I didn’t expect, but I guess I’m glad he wants to be so thorough. An MRI is scheduled for next week to see if there’s a reason for the piriformis syndrome/sciatic pain. He’s leaning towards surgery, but I don’t want to go that route yet.

An attempt to get the youngest child a cell phone at AT&T was thwarted as my husband is the primary account holder…even though he doesn’t even use a cell phone. ‘Oh whatever, I’ll do it online’…was my thought. Her birthday isn’t until Oct 7 anyway.

A few stops and we came home. Enough is enough, I’m done.

The car had been delivered with a repair estimate of $4,000.

I’m on my second glass of wine.

And then I see a FB post saying prayers are requested for a friend of mine.

And then I get the message that her son was in a terrible ATV accident on Friday night and she didn’t even know about it until Saturday, after he’d had brain surgery. He’ll be having his jaw wired shut tomorrow for about a month, and his eye socket is fractured. He is doing well now, thank God.

And that’s when I realized that all the crap and frustrations I went through today are nothing.

My babies are healthy. I’m home. I’m safe. My car is just a thing. I can pay the stupid ticket. The little boy is safe. I pray that his Mom will keep him safe from now on. And Gab’s cell phone is just a thing. I have just little things to complain about.

And now I turn my attention to praying for Nate and his Mom and Dad. Lord, please give them all the chance to complain about the little things that can go wrong in their lives.

Amen.

Patty O

Sep 7

2 Comments

The Adventure Called My Life

I was just sharing a comment and advice for a fellow Sjogren-ite and I remembered one of my best…or worst brain fog moments. There’s brain fog and then there’s brain damage. Sometimes I swear I can hear Bill Cosby saying…”Brain Damage!!!” In fact, I’ve used that comment for each of my girls at one moment in their teenage-dom.

As I’ve gotten a little older, I’ve experienced the normal…can’t remember names, addresses, phone numbers…or the mixing your children’s names up, spewing every other name and the dog’s name before you get to the correct one: “Sam, Alex, Motzy…GABI!”

But now there’s the moments of not being able to get the words out correctly. It’s the speaking of words like: clockwork and saying wock-clork. Hrmph. At least with a blog I can catch them before it goes into print.

– You know the saying ‘If you can’t laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at’? –

I laugh…a lot.

And so does my family.

And I’m so happy I can provide such good entertainment…

The best moment of all with outright – tears running down the cheeks, side-splitting, I can’t breathe anymore, belly laughter came months ago when we were going to watch a movie. I yelled (not whispered mind you) into the kitchen – “Let’s have POPCORN”! Or at least I meant to yell that.

What came out was “Let’s have COP PORN!!!”

Huh…

{insert head thunk}

There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

Yes, this is my adventure.

Welcome to it!

🙂

Patty O

ps. Have I written about this already? Hrmph…darn memory!

Aug 11

4 Comments

The Car Went ‘POOF’!

I was reminded of a story today. One I think you might enjoy. I have to admit, had it not happened to me and my family, I wouldn’t have believed it!

Let’s start with a little background…

Background story #1:

I was working as a Purchasing Assistant at an Educational Coop – my job was to get bids/award bids/send out order forms/collect orders/place orders/record & bill shipments…for about 20 schools in the NE region of MN. There was one particular item we seemed to be having a lot of trouble getting for one of our schools. A desk chair. After about 2 months the chair was nowhere to be found…it had been lost in transit once, back-ordered a few times…you name it…this chair just wasn’t coming.

Background story #2:

My nephew was attending St. John’s University where he swam for their team. For Christmas break they headed down to, I think, the Bahamas, where they stayed in a Monastery.

On his first swim in their outdoor pool, he did one length, flipped and accidentally caught his foot on the lane marker. A long cut on his foot, a visit to the hospital and 2 or 3 stitches later and he was stuck sitting watching the rest of the team swim…for the rest of the trip.

Sometime during his stay, rats got into his backpack and ate all his snacks.

One day when he went to sit on the lone piece of grass to watch his team and read a book…he sat on a bee…and it stung him on the butt (snicker, snicker)

This poor kid just couldn’t catch a break.

And now for the rest of the story…

My sister was looking for company for the 4 hr trip to pick up her son from the airport…and I needed to get that darn office chair for my customer…so off we went.

Chair was picked up from the office supply dealer…Nephew and his friend picked up from the airport…Stopped for dinner and gas…Headed home.

We were about an hour into our trip when all the dummy lights started flashing on my dashboard and I realized we were losing speed. I asked my sister to look for the mile marker and I tried to hit the gas. Accelerating wasn’t working so I pulled over. The minute we stopped the car started to fill with smoke so we quickly got out of the car and walked away. Seeing that it was just smoking, I ran back and dialed 911 on my bag cellphone (yes, I’m THAT old). I had just made the call and I heard my sister and the boys yelling at me to get out of there! There was a small circle of fire under the car. All of a sudden the car went up in smoke. No explosion, no fireworks, just ‘POOF’! We did hear a few “pops” which we were told later was the tires blowing.

We just stood there, mouths gaping, and I yelled…”My car!!!” It was January, around 8:00 at night, and the temperature was below zero….brrrrrr…and my nephew and his friend were in shorts (thankfully with blankets wrapped around them)!

Now remember that 911 call? Yeah, it was just for a state patrol to come as the car was smoking – we hadn’t seen any fire when I called. When he arrived, he called the fire truck…needless to say the car was toast…or at least 80% of it. The back foot or so was spared.

Thankfully a sweet old couple came along and offered up their car as a shelter for us to stay warm.

The state patrolman finally came to talk to us once the fire was out and I asked him…”Is there anything we should take from the car?” He just laughed at me and said “There’s nothing left!” and walked away. Huh…like I was supposed to know just how bad it was….50 yds away behind the fire…and it wasn’t like I’d EVER had a car fire before! Hrmph.

The sweet couple gave us a ride to the town they were initially headed to…they were on their way for a little gambling. On the way there, my sister and I were trying to think of what was all in the car. The first thing we thought of was our purses. “AAACK – our purses!!!” OK, what do you keep in your purse? We started naming things off…wallet, cash, credit cards, pictures…lip balm, sunglasses…then my sister says: tampons. I looked at her and said “Sure – fuel for the fire!” At least we were able to laugh…

When we went back the next day to survey the damage (and because my ex obviously didn’t believe it was as bad as I said it was), the car was bare metal (again, expect that last foot or so). It was unbelievable to see it up close – the shell of the car, the bare metal seats…I even found a quarter on one seat which had bubbled! Now that was a hot fire!

I giggled a little when my nephew pulled out a piece of his luggage and a fairly burnt coconut he’d brought home for his Mom…”I was bringing home a coconut for you!”…until I realized he was in tears. This is one trip I’m sure he’ll never forget.

Oh and lest I forget…remember the desk chair?

Yeah…scorched.

Picture me calling the dear stock lady at the school and the vendor to explain what happened…I think we laughed until we cried! How many things went wrong in trying to get this order to them? The vendor assured me he’d ship it out ASAP, and the customer just laughed and shook her head (I could hear it on the phone).

Thank God we were all okay, but what a crazy, mixed up adventure we had that day.

May it NEVER happen again!!!

Patty O

Thanks to Carl Spurgeon on Pinterest for the great photo (this was not my car).

Aug 7

10 Comments

The Puppy Chronicles

We are now on Day 6…

We’ve tried out about 6 or 7 names on him…I know I told you Castle was it. Well, we changed our minds once again. I was hedging on Castle, and then Tim called him “Motza-ball” yesterday when he did something silly. That might sound silly, but it’s a term of endearment for dogs and little children when they’re being funny. And a new name was born. We’ll be calling him Motza or Motzy. It fits…he is all white like mozzarella, and quite silly.

I am happy to report that he has us (almost) fully trained. When he runs for the front of the house or bathroom, we know he has to go out to go potty (which is the other way). We’re down to one accident in the house today (don’t ask how many times we run him outside 🙂 )! Read more